Search

is one of those articles my dad hands me wordlessly across the dinner table at the Palm after 6:00pm Sunday mass, leaving me to draw my own conclusions not only about the piece itself but about what my dad’s motives might’ve been in giving it to me. It’s a smart piece. For those of us with dayjobs we like but passions we, well, feel passionatelyabout, it’s a tough but fair read. You quit your dayjob to do your dream and your dream is tough as all hell AND you’re suddenly worried about money. Leap and the net will appear, my ass.

I can’t afford to quit my dayjob. I only recently dug myself out of the mountain of debt I’d accrued pursuing acting in my 20s. I hopped from assistant gig to assistant gig to up my salary and get (and stay) financially stable. Even now, when I know I need new headshots and want to take a screenwriting class, I know I can’t because I have a little less than a grand in debt and I want (need, let’s be honest) to shrink that back to 0. I don’t want to count on my bonus (here’s hoping I’m still getting one, you never know) to pay off the overspending of the months before.

There is that fear, though. I don’t want to wake up an old lady and still doing someone else’s expense reports. I don’t want to potentially raise a kid or two and those kids tell their friends that I’m just a secretary. That’s not okay. Even now, I know my dad, a self-made man from the Bronx, dies a little inside when he thinks about how I graduated from a good school cum laude and am totally content not remotely pursuing a corner office.

“You’re just as smart as they are, Kad. And just as educated.”

Sigh.

The last time my dad silently handed me a bit of paper? A tear-out from his church bulletin, an ad for catholicmatch.com.